Artificial Accomplishment

The internet is awash in AI generated garbage that poses as art. It seems millions of us want to be artists without doing any of the dirty work.

Finger Painting Figure #1 by Madeline Carlson, aged 5. This is real art. Made with real hands.

I first began dabbling in the vast field of graphic design as a teenager. That opening foray into the world of design did not emanate from some grand desire to express my soul through a visual means. Instead, it came out of sheer necessity. My parents had purchased a small print shop on the north side of Lansing during my junior year of high school. Almost immediately, I was asked to pitch in with manual tasks like bindery work, deliveries, and running the photo-copiers at the front counter.

Within a matter of weeks, I learned the process behind preparing artwork for the printing press. I was taught how mock-ups were done at the light table, and moved on to gain a greater understanding of the delicate work required to prep a piece of art before making the plate that would be attached to the printing press to make hundreds, or even thousands of copies of a design.

There was also a small, rather primitive darkroom in the back of the shop where we sometimes enlarged images, adjusted elements for the plating process, and even developed halftone images for offset printing. I was not following a craft out of desire; I was learning the basic elements of the operation to lend a hand. However, over time, I began to see how I might use the tools at my disposal to begin creating visual artworks of my own.

I started simply, making large collages composed of cassette covers which I then photocopied and displayed around my room as ersatz posters. The copies were printed on pastel papers in black ink, and required little more than some minor arrangement on my part, still they felt like a spark in the direction of creativity.

Over the next few years, I tried a variety of pursuits to begin to refine my artistic voice. I shot a photo essay of urban decay around the crumbling north side of Lansing. I then printed a limited edition run of postcards in addition to a booklet featuring those images, as well as brief series of essays about the photographs. Not only did I shoot the images, and then print and design all of the physical work myself, I also developed all of the images in our shabby little darkroom.

In other, less successful experiments, I toyed with negatives of photographs displayed with gobs of ink wedged between plexiglass. I physically manipulated images in the dark room and then colored them in by hand with ink or oil paints. Most of these were foolhardy attempts to find an artistic voice using nothing but the tools that lay about me. Still, through trial and error, I was finding a skill, and a voice.

As the quick-print business continued to evolve into the mid-90’s, our pre-press operation became more and more reliant upon digital tools like Photoshop. The famed Adobe program, even in its most nascent form could save a project hours just by speeding up the pre-press operation. This complicated program came with a steep learning curve, but over time, my colleague Ernesto and I began to find our way around the program.

During this stretch in the mid-90s, I was in my first band, an art-rock outfit called Third Uncle with Ernesto. In the print shop, Ernesto and I would work together to design a trio of covers for cassettes for Third Uncle, as well as a host of posters for shows we played during our 18 month run as a band.

After our family finally sold the print shop venture in the early aughts, I continued to use Photoshop as a way to design show posters and album art. At the time, I was lucky enough to have a family friend who was a yearbook representative who was able to get me an educational copy of the pricey software for free.

With each successive poster, handbill, and CD sleeve, I slowly honed my chops at the complicated design program, and began to develop a sort of visual style to my own work. For nearly forty years, I have been fumbling through the world of design; learning the ropes, understanding the fundamental philosophies of the craft, all while constantly honing my chops and refining my style.

They say that 10,000 hours makes you a master. If that’s the case, I am more than a master at album and poster design, but I would never announce that. Nor do I require a moniker like that to know that I am a graphic designer with immense experience, and a good degree of talent to boot.

That experience and talent has come largely as the result of hard, often unpleasant work. My greatest design achievements have come because I learned the lessons from my worst creative defeats. I have spent decades understanding what works in my designs and what doesn’t. My voice and my style are completely unique to me, but that voice and that style are the result of tens of thousands of hours of toil, practice, errors, and triumphs. The best work that I have done stands upon the ashes of all of my mistakes.

A selection of some of the album covers that I have designed over the last twenty five years.

I am as proud of the record sleeves that I have designed as I am any of the songs or performances included on any of the records inside of those sleeves. To my mind, my design work is just as valuable and integral to my creative output as my writing, podcasting, and my music. I would argue that the extensive experience that I have in the world of design is a part of what makes me the songwriter and musician that I am today. Although I am working with words and melody, I often see songs in a visual context. That comes from learning about film and design long before I could play guitar or write my own songs.

Through this four decades of trial and error, I have developed a voice and a vision for the way I want my work to look. I have also done the work to hone that voice and vision. Much of that work was dirty and unpleasant, but it was crucial to the craft. For art to instill greatness, it must require some form of sacrifice. The process must involve work for it to rightly call itself art.

Now with a AI apps, a simple prompt can result in a fully finished poster for your band’s next gig. The internet is awash is tacky, lifeless, soulless, AI generated slop posing as art. Art can only be arrived at with a purpose, an intention, and the practical act of creation. Telling a machine what to do might provide a purpose, and it might even replicate the concept of intention, but it requires no effort.

That is why AI generated art can never, ever be actual art.

Let me say that again for the kids in the back; AI generated art is not art. Full stop.

Making art is a messy business of mistakes, refinement, inspiration, luck, and a dose of magic. When you cede your creative voice to a machine you are giving up a section of your humanity. Yes, an AI poster for your band’s show might be easier, or even more “professional” looking than if you had done it yourself, but it is a creation without effort, sweat, or vulnerability. If someone hates on your image, you can blame the machine. If they love it, you get to take the credit. This is the coward’s way out, and not the path of an artist.

By allowing AI prompts to design your poster, edit your music video, or write your next script, you are goin up the very thing that makes us special on this planet; our humanity. Furthermore, it looks artificial and synthetic. Because a machine is doing it for you, it cannot contain your voice, your aesthetic, or your intentions. It is a simulacrum of what it thinks you will like. And that simulacrum is made up of stolen work.

As if the poor quality and lazy approach to AI were not enough, it is a system built upon the theft of all art that has ever been created. You are not just cheating by allowing a machine to do your work, you are letting a machine steal the pieces it uses to create that “original” work for you. If you use AI to make your art you are an art thief, and not an artist.

Simply put, there is no ethical way to use AI, especially as a means of creating art. It is a system built upon the theft of artists throughout history, from greats to amateurs. Would you feel comfortable if someone stole a chunk of your life’s work and took credit for it? All while you never got paid a cent for it? You know it’s wrong, and you’re doing it anyway.

Add to all of these ethical concerns the massive environmental concerns raised by the data centers that power these engines of creative theft. A recent study by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy looked at the way s ion which our energy and water resources are being severely compromised to foster this boom of AI technology. They describe the water usage from these centers as a giant soda straw. Furthermore, the study points additional risks like noise and air pollution, water pollution, and the overwhelming stress that centers like this place on their local communities.

These effects are why there has been a push to force these data centers to be built in areas where lower income families live because these marginalized communities often have fewer resources to fight against these mighty, negative forces that are worming their way in to these communities.

Somehow, after reading all of this information, which many of you were already well aware of, many of you will continue to create your gig posters, faux oil paintings, and historical reenactment videos of famous battles featuring nothing but cats waging combat with these corrupt and dangerous tools. Some of these same folks will urge you to shop local, and be engaged in your community, all while helping to destroy because it saves them a few minutes and a few bucks when they need a poster made.

Cheers,
Matty C